Blackout

On Thursday, the entire county of San Diego experienced a massive blackout. Other parts of Southern California, Arizona, and Mexico were also affected. I remember blackouts as a child as being enormously exciting. As an adult, it was a little disappointing that we hadn't had more of them. I thought that Thursday night's experience might have made up for any previous deprivation I had been feeling, but overall it really wasn't that bad.

All over the region, traffic was gridlocked, because the traffic lights weren't working and everyone was trying to get home. I was so fortunate to miss the worst of it. Once again, I was grateful that we live in such a nice part of town, where we usually go against traffic during the busy times of day. And I couldn't help but think of the people stuck in elevators or on rides at the zoo and Sea World. The thought of being on the zoo's Skyfari ride in the middle of a blackout is enough to make me never want to go on it again.

Another thing that was nice was that this happened in early September, when it still stays light relatively late in the day. Unfortunately, it did happen at the tail end of a three-day heat wave. It would have been much more comfortable if the blackout had been even the day after. But we had a fun dinner in our backyard of veggie burgers and cheese bread that were cooked on the grill. For dessert, we finished the carton of ice cream that was in our freezer. The kids were thrilled.

By the time dinner was over, it was starting to get dark. We lit a few candles in the kitchen and used a flashlight to get us through the kids' bedtime routine. By the time the sun had set, it was time for bed. The only thing that really bothered Jack about the blackout was that it was hot in his room and he didn't have his night light. But he was pretty brave about the whole thing, and he did great.

One thing I had been looking forward to was the silence and the darkness. On the first point, I was sorely disappointed. One of the houses down the hill ran an incredibly noisy generator the entire time. The proprietor of said home was apparently terrified that his freezer full of possum was going to thaw. There were also a lot more sirens than usual, hopefully responding to small candle-generated fires and not more serious traffic incidents or other emergencies.

Other than that, it was quieter. There were fewer cars on the road. There were fewer planes in the air. Our teenage neighbor, Max, couldn't play his electric guitar. There was, of course, nothing for the crickets. But you never realize how much your own house hums until it stops. And then starts back up again.

The quality of light outside was incredible. I'm sure some people were happy there was a nice big moon giving off lots of light that night, but I personally would have preferred more darkness. It would have been lovely to see clusters of stars over San Diego. As it was, I had to content myself with more stars than I usually see but also a beautiful ethereal blue moonlight glow over our rooftops. It was surprisingly bright and so blue - a nice change from the pink and orange of all the artificial light.

At 10:40 PM, we started hearing that power was slowly being restored to the region. We didn't end up getting ours back until 2:20 AM. It turned out to be a nice adventure for us, although the one thing I would have changed was that it would have been on a cooler day.

The highlight for me was that all the clocks in the house started keeping time at 12:00 from the minute the power came on. This includes the one in Jack's room. So when he woke up, he thought it was only 6:00, when it was really actually 8:20. We've trained him to stay in his room until after 7:00, so by the time he came to wake me up, it was actually way past 9 AM. Score!

But I think Jack will always remember the blackout as the day he got to eat all the ice cream.